short answer

Chapter 12

That’s the Way the Cookie Crumbles: A Surveillance Economy

Objectives

To understand:

Ways in which a surveillance economy may be emerging as the new mode of development in the global capitalist economy

Important differences between a surveillance society and a surveillance economy

How recurrent myths surrounding old media forms and technologies that underlie a surveillance society condition the growth of a surveillance economy

How euphemisms disguise the level of commercial surveillance at the heart of economic and social relations of production

A Surveillance Economy, the Key to a Surveillance Society

Surveillance: focused, systematic, and routine attention to personal details for purposes of influence, management, protection, or detection

Surveillance economy: idea that dominant forces directing economic development are those to do with surveillance and the process of commodification

A Surveillance Society

Social surveillance: general surveillance for the purpose of keeping the peace, preventing and detecting crime, and maintaining social order

Ever since nation-states and governments were developed as separate, rulers have carried out surveillance

Suspicion of governments vested in economic and military power that someone, somewhere, is hatching a conspiracy to overthrow them

Governments are legitimized through popular elections, but reality of a system in which voting is, for most people, a ritual of choosing the lesser of two evils rather than a means of direct participation in decision-making

A Surveillance Society, cont’d

Every day experiences with economic struggle, subordination, and marginalization in the face of systemic and persistent inequality imply that the end result of narrowcasting is that the individual is completely responsible for their own predicament

To keep people from collectively expressing their experiences via collective social movements, dissent can be also be mobilized

A Surveillance Society, cont’d

Myth of a society of equals and opportunity—reality for many people is unemployment, or eight or more working hours per day and part-time shifts in factories, shops, and offices

Trends: higher taxes for workers; lower taxes for corporations; less but more expensive health care; fewer teachers in public schools; continual privatization of public resources

A Surveillance Economy

Surveillance economy: sharpening focus on security issues and the growing demand for security-related goods and service that have given rise to range of economic activities in both government and business

Surveillance is a critical part of top-down, political economic and social construction of security that places more power and control in close relationship between corporations and states

The Internet is a critical site where this relationship is being negotiated and forged for the future

A convergence of interests is developing among players such as copyright owners and service providers on one hand, and the state’s growing interest in the digital environment on the other

A Surveillance Economy, cont’d

Very act of surveillance has become commodified

Surveillance is used to shape and manage consumption patterns (e.g., barcodes)

Radio-Frequency Identification Device (RFID): automatic identification in which remote sensors are able to retrieve and store data from transponder devices

Consumer profiling has become a multibillion dollar worldwide industry in the past decade

Convergence and Surveillance: From Broadcast to Narrowcast

Facial-recognition software and other biometric already in use

Digital technology and convergence has exponentially increased the amount of surveillance and the volume of information that can be monitored

Data are retrievable at greater distances of time and space

Many technologies that are used for surveillance are used in the media for narrowcasting

The Knowledge Economy

Knowledge society based on four key principles that encompass social well-being and development:

Freedom of expression

Universal access to information and knowledge

Respect for human dignity

Cultural and linguistic diversity

These principles hard to find in reality of global economy

The Knowledge Economy, cont’d

Network economy: based on ability to process knowledge efficiently, adapt to changing landscape of the global economy, and transform signals into commodities by processing knowledge

The global media and the associated creative industries are at the core of the network society and the knowledge economy

Knowledge economy does not shift the balance in favour of labour; it changes the rules to ensure the owners of the means of production continue their lucky streak

The “Security” Economy

OECD’s “The Security Economy” (2004) supports measures to expand the security economy and acknowledges that commercial and political surveillance is increasing

Security economy: activities concerned with preventing or reducing risk of deliberate harm to life and property

In a security economy, methods of surveillance much more deeply entrenched in the production and consumption process

Growth of security economy encouraged by huge grants from American governments to private companies, helping them develop new technologies and data-mining capabilities

The “Search” Economy

Search economy: economic relations of production that seem to permeate capitalism in the early years of the twenty-first century, epitomized by Google

Marketing and advertising executives realized search engines provide efficient way to capture and exploit new leads (your mind and your behaviour)

Surveillance increases in accordance with the necessities of capitalism

In modern production process, electronic surveillance used to document and control workers’ behaviour and communication for guaranteeing the production of surplus value

Surveillance in the Market: Buying and Selling Identity

Harder to be anonymous today because of political and market surveillance

Media- and market-based surveillance of our spending, eating, shopping, banking, entertainment, and other habits

Privacy reconceptualized so that it is no longer seen as a social right or a civil liberty to be exercised by consumers; privacy has become a means of exchange

Surveillance has become automated—now the consumer often initiates the process of data gathering

Mining the Mind

We give our information away for free whenever we are asked for our phone number or postal code, make a purchase, fill out a warranty card, or enter a contest

Cookies provide a way for a web site to recognize you and keep track of your preferences

Data are collected in order to sort people into categories that are commodified for advertisers and marketers

Personally identifiable information (PII)

Google—and Ye Shall Find _____?

Google and other search-engine companies keep tight control over the complex algorithms that determine the results of a search

Google’s search engines are neither objective nor random

Google’s main source of revenue is from advertising (99%)

Google—and Ye Shall Find _____? cont’d

Google can decide what advertising it accepts, what words and sites it will list and you can access, and what information is available

Facilitates reorganization of information according to economic priorities and places this information under private control

In the process, since Googled information appears free, it appears to be offering a public service

Digital Freedom or Digital Enclosure?

Information collected structures users as commodities—you pay for the content with your information

Dataveillance: systematic monitoring of people’s actions or communications through the application of information technology

Personal dataveillance: one’s actions

Mass dataveillance: a group or large sets of populations in order to detect individuals of interest

Digital Freedom or Digital Enclosure? cont’d

Data-mining is a new industry, with handful of corporations owning it all

Transaction that results in the delivery of consumer information to the data-mining companies is concealed behind a veneer of consumerism

Relationships with the state are becoming more complicated

On one hand, protection for consumers comes in the form of a government warning; on the other, these companies are entering into commercial arrangements to also sell data back to the US government, the FBI, and the CIA

A Question of Privacy?

Privacy Act, 1985: fails to protect the majority of workers across Canada from workplace surveillance and does not address privacy of persons under 18

Issue of privacy focused on the individual in terms of freedom and control, both couched in terms of “choice,” but information can clearly be collected without such a decision

A Question of Privacy? cont’d

Questions on information collected sorting people into categories:

What if your category is considered important that you end up on a no-fly list or imprisoned?

What if there’s no place free of the advertising that is tailor-made for you?

What if you are so unimportant that you are marginalized, identified as unworthy or unnecessary?